Adults on Medicaid will be required to work 80 hours per month. The Trump administration says people who are sick will have to prove they ar
Selena Simmons-Duffin at NPR:
Advocates for people with serious illnesses, like cancer and HIV, say the strict Medicaid work rules that the Trump administration released this week are likely to put ongoing treatments in jeopardy.
States must put the work requirements into effect by January 1. That was already a tight timeline, says Adrianna McIntyre, assistant professor of health policy at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. "It takes states literally months — usually years — to make the types of changes to their systems that they needed to make for this new rule," she says. "They were severely constrained by the timeline having a year and a half from the time of the law being passed to implement all of this." At stake is health coverage for 68 million low-income Americans on Medicaid, the health insurance system jointly funded by states and the federal government. States must "make the changes, test the changes to make sure they're not going to break the system, and then go live," McIntyre says.
The nearly 400-page interim final rule released Monday makes that process even harder. For months, federal officials have been meeting with states informally and giving them guidance, and states understood that people with conditions where continuous health insurance coverage was really important would be exempt. "What the rule says, as published, is that that's actually not enough," McIntyre explains. "The condition or the disease needs to be actively interfering with your ability to work. So people with early stage cancer who are in radiation treatment but still have the capacity to work, or people who have HIV but can still technically work, are not exempted from the work requirement." McIntyre and others foresee situations where a person newly diagnosed with cancer, who is working, loses Medicaid because they don't fill out the paperwork correctly. That could lead to patients losing coverage when they need it most.
Pitched as "a path to prosperity"
Republicans have long heralded work requirements as a way to encourage personal responsibility. Dr. Mehmet Oz, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, presented the policy to reporters at the White House Tuesday. "If you're sitting at home, which is true for the millions of people who are able-bodied on Medicaid, on average, you're spending 6.1 hours watching television, or just hanging around," Oz said. "So, as a path to prosperity, Congress very wisely said, 'Let's get you back into the workforce.'"
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Most on Medicaid already work
The new requirements apply in the more than 40 states that expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. For years, that has meant any low-income adult who does not have access to affordable insurance at work could enroll in Medicaid. Starting in January, adults in those states, from age 19 to 64 will have to periodically prove that they are either working, going to school or volunteering at least 80 hours a month. Alternatively, they will have to prove that they are exempt from the work requirement. Most adults who get Medicaid are already working, according to an analysis of government data by the health policy research organization KFF. About 1 in 5 people are not meeting the 80 hours-per-month threshold, KFF found, and this population had barriers that kept them from the workforce. Some could not find jobs; others were laid off; others had retired.
The Trump Regime’s CMS is enacting harsh Medicaid work requirements, effective 2027. Such a change will adversely effect 68M Medicaid recipients.
See Also:
NOTUS: The Trump Administration Is Taking a Strict Approach to Medicaid Work Requirements
